UPDATED Quote of the Week (from the Mark Steyn "Show Trial")

This is quite simply, brilliant:

"Against the argument that you cannot cry fire in a crowded theatre: 'Oh yes you can — you must, if in your considered view there is a fire'."

"In that case there is a duty to cry fire."

--Julian Porter, Robson Square, Vancouver , June 6, 2008
Closing arguments in the show trial against Maclean's Magazine

The full statement was not bad either.

Meanwhile Steyn has a few choice words for the Kangaroo Court pretending to be a serious "tribunal". Kafka would have been proud--as would have Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine:

The man whose controversial writing is at the centre of a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal complaint is daring the tribunal to rule against him.

Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress filed the complaint with the tribunal over an excerpt of Mark Steyn's book published in Maclean's magazine in 2006, saying it was hateful and showed contempt for Muslims.

"We want to lose," Steyn said Friday.

"We want to lose so we can take it to a real court and if necessary up to the Supreme Court of Canada and we can get the ancient liberties of free-born Canadian citizens that have been taken away from them by tribunals like this.

"We want those ancient civil liberties restored."

Steyn, who did not address the tribunal but was in the hearing room for some of the submissions, said he's "terrified" that the issue will be dismissed by the tribunal because the lawyer for the congress "put on such a staggeringly inept case."

Though not present for the entire five-day hearing, Steyn was not shy about how he feels towards the tribunal. He's called its members "pretend judges" and the system a joke.

"I think this court shames the province of British Columbia and is simply incompatible with the traditions of a great free society with a long, legal inheritance," he said outside the hearing room.

The lawyers representing Maclean's magazine chose not to present any witnesses to the tribunal, saying the complaint infringes upon freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

If you have not yet purchased and read Steyn's book--why not?? I got an autographed copy from his site, which he chose to dedicate to "The Discerning Texan" (for that reason alone, I ought to put it in a glass case...).

It is easily the most insigtful book on the subject to have been written in the last 5 years. And it is funny.

UPDATE: An exceptional piece from The American Thinker (read the whole thing):

If you want to look ahead to the United States under Barack Obama and an expanded Congressional majority for the Democrats, consider Canada.

Canada's greatest gift to the contemporary world of letters --- Mark Steyn --- is being persecuted for free speech in his home country.

Columnist Steyn is being hauled before something called the "Canada Human Rights Tribunal," a parallel legal system to the normal Canadian courts, without all the bother of due process, the presumption of innocence, a defined and limited legal venue, and protection for free speech.

Four Muslim law students complained about Steyn for accurately quoting Norway's infamous Mullah Krekar, a Kurdish mujaheed who has been twisting his Norwegian hosts around his little finger for years. You see, Norway can't deport a fraudulent asylum seeker if he is subject to the death penalty back home --- no matter how many innocent people he's blown to bits back in Kurdistan. It's just an invitation for killer mujahedeen to enjoy Norway's free hospitality forever, and Mullah Krekar has been taking full advantage of it.

Said Mullah Krekar to a Norwegian newspaper:

"We're the ones who will change you . . . Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children." (italics added)

Steyn quoted Krekar in Canada's McLean's Magazine and both are now getting sued for reproducing Krekar saying that "the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes."

Thus Muslims are using the PC Police to accuse Mark Steyn of repeating what a Muslim agitator said. Telling the truth is no defense. In Canada it's a basic human right not to have your malignant heroes quoted against you. Thus are human rights twisted into their opposites.

Forget the Spanish Inquisition. They're so five centuries ago. Today Canada's Stalinoids can simply punish people for speaking their minds. The Left rediscovered its Stalinist roots in the 1970s when the Boomer brigade conquered the culture. That's when Canada's farcical "Human Rights Tribunals" were created. Today, eighty percent of American college campuses have speech codes prohibiting politically incorrect speech. The ghost of Stalin stalks the earth, looking remarkably healthy.